Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg sat down to deliver a 22-chapter lecture series entitled “Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century,” which explores how communities can build resilience in the face of our intertwined sustainability crises. The series is intended for students and concerned individuals of all ages.
Chapter 4: Depletion
Depletion is an inescapable fact of life: As soon as you’ve taken one sip of your coffee, or one bite of ice cream, you’ve begun to deplete that resource. Economists will tell you, “No problem. You can just run to the store and buy more, or find something else just as good as a substitute.” But does that work on a finite planet, and are all resources so easily substitutable?
Here Richard Heinberg explores the topic of depletion and why it matters so much — to our well-being today and the future of humanity and the planet tomorrow.
View Chapter 3: Population & Consumption
New chapters will be rolled out on a regular basis over the coming weeks, but you can also sign up to view all the videos right away.
Image Credits
- Forestry worker: Kletr/Shutterstock.com
- Fish in crates: AJP/Shutterstock.com
- Deforestation in Brazil: Frontpage/Shutterstock.com
- Fish catch: Chaikovskiy Igor/Shutterstock.com
- PA oil boom #1: Creative Commons
- PA oil boom #2: Creative Commons
- PA oil boom #3:PHMC Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums
- PA oil boom #4: Jeff Snedden/timesonline.com
- Tar Sands: Julia Kilpatrick, the Pembina Institute
- Deep water oil rig: Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock.com
- Tight oil well in Russia: Northfoto/Shutterstock.com
- Fracking workers: Weatherford International
- Cars on highway: chuyuss/Shutterstock.com
- Cargo ships in port: Sheila Fitzgerald/Shutterstock.com
- Airplanes on runway: G Tipene/Shutterstock.com
- Phosphate mine: B Brown/Shutterstock.com
- Ship transporting phosphate: Brian W./Boatnerd.com
- Tractor spreading nitrogen: oticki/Shutterstock.com
- Nitrogen plant: saoirse2013/Shutterstock.com
